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8th edition is the best edition of the game yet. Are there weak points to it? Sure. There always will be in a game. However, I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
Here's what I would say are amazing points that 8th edition has over any previous edition:
#1 - Troops aren't a tax. They're an investment
More than in any previous edition of the game, Troops are the backbone of your list. The reason is clear; Command Points. This gives another angle for players to "game" the system from. Stratagems are a big part of the game, and are able to turn lackluster units into golden units, and golden units in bonkers broken units. Regardless of what you're using them for, Stratagems are a big deal, but you'll only have access to a good number of them if you bring Battalions or Brigades, and for that you need the humble Troop. Troops aren't a tax any longer, they're points you're spending for a return on investment.
#2 - Anything can hurt anything. No action is completely wasted.
It really sucks when you just can't hurt something no matter what. Having a sliver of a chance is better than none. The current to-wound system is better than any other edition yet. It has its losers (sorry Multilasers & Heavy Bolters), but most guns feel like winners.
#3 - All hail modifiers.
A 6+ to hit is nearly impossible to make, but how about a 5+? Thanks to the wonderfulness of the to-wound and to-hit system they're using, modifiers have a big place in the game. +1 to wound doesn't sound much when you first hear it, but when you consider that in some cases it's increasing your damage output by 33% of something that already might deal a lot... and the effects add up fast. Previous systems just went all or nothing with instant buff to 2+, or instant drop to 6+.
#4 - Movement matters.
Getting across the table quickly has never been so important, and by opening up the movement options for all factions, the game really does feel like you're in the thick of it instantly. Anything that isn't crazy fast can feel slow as molasses by comparison, which can be really interesting in its own right!
#5 - Character rules work.
They may not always make sense ("But I can't even see any other target!! why can't I shoot the Farseer?"), but they are highly functional, with pros and cons for all sorts of positions and locations. Heroic intervention doesn't come up often, but is clutch when it does, and you can use that small movement to really bully some models out of an area. Auras may be a little over-plentiful at times, but they super helpful and really help make the character a central point to an army.
#6 - Mortal wounds are AWESOME.
Love these. I was really worried stepping into this edition and thinking of how it'd be like stomp, but it really hasn't been. Again, there's investment that needs to happen to make mortal wound spamming a thing. It's generally so hard that most armies don't do it. As such, the few instances where you can are amazing, and help knock over and keep in check units that are just really amazingly resilient.
#7 - Psychic Powers are a challenge, and the system to counteract them works.
You can make a psychic army (see; Smite), but a lot of previous psychic systems only ever seemed to make psychic powers odder and odder. Now it's a straight 2d6 roll against a target number. Beat it, it goes off. Don't get double 1's or 6's, or bad stuff happens. If your opponent has psykers nearby, they may snuff the power. Simple, clean, fast, effective, and fun.
#8 - Tournament systems are helping games be better.
Regardless of whether or not you play in tournaments, the fact that there are so many now, and these tournaments are getting support or even just recognition from a bigger community and GW helps everyone. It's because of tournies that GW can get the help to find really broken combinations that might be swept under the rug in previous editions. Being committed to making tournaments better helps keep GW involved, which helps all participants in the hobby. Yes, even you Mr. "I only collect 40k to paint the miniatures" guy! Look at the new Contrast Paints coming out. What's the big theme? Making the models Battle Ready. Ready for what? For tournaments! That's what!
#9 - GW is a more involved.
The biggest thing over other editions is just how involved GW is in their game. Because they've been involved, GW has been able to correct course on a bunch of things that were not fun. They fixed the character targeting rules. They fixed Smite Spam. They fixed Flyer Spam (twice!). They fixed infinitely regenerating CP. They're done a lot, and they will continue to help make the game better.
Isn't all of that true for only some armies though? Am sure that if an army come out with a balanced codex all or most of those things can help the quality of the game. But having everything wounds everything, facing ton of normal smite or very fast armies with modifires when GW gave no such rules for your own army is not very fun. Same with GW involvment, if GW involvment in to your army is them nerfing you every FAQ, it doesn't realy help to enjoy the game.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Err, what? What you just described with CP is a textbook troops tax. You aren't taking troops because the units themselves have value, you're taking them because you need to fill mandatory FOC slots. And all of these CP battery detachments take them as MSU with minimal upgrades to keep the tax as cheap as possible.
I disagree with you here. If they were useless, you wouldn't see them at all. The value of what they allow you to bring (CPs) combined with their presence means they are worthwhile. Yes, the best ones in a tournament are like that, but if we look at tournaments in the past editions, troops were as devoid as possible. Now they have a place. Maybe you don't like that place, but it's there, and smart players make use of these units to great effect such that they take MORE than the minimum. Since there's so much reward to having more CP's, they CHOOSE to pay for even another 3 units of Troops to get even more CP. Then they use those troops so that the points are also not wasted. By your definition, any unit which you take for any reason other than "it shoots good" is a tax. This isn't a tax, it's an investment. You put points in, you get CP's out, but how much you put in is up to you - not up to the game.
Problem is that some troops are useful beyond filling mandatory FOC slots, while others are not. The tactical SM is useless, genestealers are OP². Plaguebearers are excellent, necron warriors/immortals are not.
8th edition is the best edition of the game yet. Are there weak points to it? Sure. There always will be in a game. However, I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
Here's what I would say are amazing points that 8th edition has over any previous edition:
#1 - Troops aren't a tax. They're an investment
More than in any previous edition of the game, Troops are the backbone of your list. The reason is clear; Command Points. This gives another angle for players to "game" the system from. Stratagems are a big part of the game, and are able to turn lackluster units into golden units, and golden units in bonkers broken units. Regardless of what you're using them for, Stratagems are a big deal, but you'll only have access to a good number of them if you bring Battalions or Brigades, and for that you need the humble Troop. Troops aren't a tax any longer, they're points you're spending for a return on investment.
#2 - Anything can hurt anything. No action is completely wasted.
It really sucks when you just can't hurt something no matter what. Having a sliver of a chance is better than none. The current to-wound system is better than any other edition yet. It has its losers (sorry Multilasers & Heavy Bolters), but most guns feel like winners.
#3 - All hail modifiers.
A 6+ to hit is nearly impossible to make, but how about a 5+? Thanks to the wonderfulness of the to-wound and to-hit system they're using, modifiers have a big place in the game. +1 to wound doesn't sound much when you first hear it, but when you consider that in some cases it's increasing your damage output by 33% of something that already might deal a lot... and the effects add up fast. Previous systems just went all or nothing with instant buff to 2+, or instant drop to 6+.
#4 - Movement matters.
Getting across the table quickly has never been so important, and by opening up the movement options for all factions, the game really does feel like you're in the thick of it instantly. Anything that isn't crazy fast can feel slow as molasses by comparison, which can be really interesting in its own right!
#5 - Character rules work.
They may not always make sense ("But I can't even see any other target!! why can't I shoot the Farseer?"), but they are highly functional, with pros and cons for all sorts of positions and locations. Heroic intervention doesn't come up often, but is clutch when it does, and you can use that small movement to really bully some models out of an area. Auras may be a little over-plentiful at times, but they super helpful and really help make the character a central point to an army.
#6 - Mortal wounds are AWESOME.
Love these. I was really worried stepping into this edition and thinking of how it'd be like stomp, but it really hasn't been. Again, there's investment that needs to happen to make mortal wound spamming a thing. It's generally so hard that most armies don't do it. As such, the few instances where you can are amazing, and help knock over and keep in check units that are just really amazingly resilient.
#7 - Psychic Powers are a challenge, and the system to counteract them works.
You can make a psychic army (see; Smite), but a lot of previous psychic systems only ever seemed to make psychic powers odder and odder. Now it's a straight 2d6 roll against a target number. Beat it, it goes off. Don't get double 1's or 6's, or bad stuff happens. If your opponent has psykers nearby, they may snuff the power. Simple, clean, fast, effective, and fun.
#8 - Tournament systems are helping games be better.
Regardless of whether or not you play in tournaments, the fact that there are so many now, and these tournaments are getting support or even just recognition from a bigger community and GW helps everyone. It's because of tournies that GW can get the help to find really broken combinations that might be swept under the rug in previous editions. Being committed to making tournaments better helps keep GW involved, which helps all participants in the hobby. Yes, even you Mr. "I only collect 40k to paint the miniatures" guy! Look at the new Contrast Paints coming out. What's the big theme? Making the models Battle Ready. Ready for what? For tournaments! That's what!
#9 - GW is a more involved.
The biggest thing over other editions is just how involved GW is in their game. Because they've been involved, GW has been able to correct course on a bunch of things that were not fun. They fixed the character targeting rules. They fixed Smite Spam. They fixed Flyer Spam (twice!). They fixed infinitely regenerating CP. They're done a lot, and they will continue to help make the game better.
I honestly thought this was satire at first. Troops are taken to generate CP, except in those cases where you happen to have decent troops, which seems to be more a product of luck than design. People absolutely take Troops as tax, with the desired outcome being CPs rather than having lots of Troops. Yes, Troops have some use simply due to their existence but I find armies with lots of Troops are the ones who just happen to have viable ones.
Movement is largely irrelevant. Speed is what matters, which is different. Positioning isn't important enough beyond a simple requirement to get in range. The myriad ways units can Deep Strike mean lots of units don't even care about their actual Movement stat. Meanwhile, some units are now so ridiculously fast they can be in combat turn one, which allows for very little counterplay, if any. The character rules feed into the lack of importance of movement since for most armies the most important thing is clumping up around your character auras. There's no strategy involved in being within 6" of a couple of characters and re-rolling your 80+ dice a turn. Making characters so difficult to target is one of the biggest failings of 8th edition, IMO. Added to that, so many of them also get really good protection even when you can target them, which even further reduces the importance of good manoeuvring.
The Psychic phase and Mortal Wound spam is a joke too. There's no tactics or counterplay involved in such a simple system. I may want to stop my opponent getting one specific power off but I have no real say over whether that happens. A system more similar to WH's magic system would be much superior - something that allows both players to make decisions about which powers to cast and stop. Then we have all the armies that don't have psykers and therefore lack psychic defence. Mortal Wounds are about the least fun mechanic in the game when you just sit there and watch your opponent do guaranteed damage over and over again without you having any ability to react and without your stats meaning anything at all. MW are a clumsy mechanic that might have been fine if they were kept to rare circumstances, as GW initially promised when previewing 8th.
GW being more involved is good but what's frustrating me the most about 8th so far is how close it is to being a very good game. I don't think it would take major changes to the system and the Codices to fix a lot of the problems but I fear we're stuck with the system as is now and may even see GW double down on some of the worst parts of the system.
Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.
8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...
the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.
then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/07 13:28:18
My first impression has been absolutely negative.
After several games I have gained confidence that the game is better than I have thought.
In the meanwhile I think its quite a good approach to a simplified game when compared with the 7th ed.
What I still dislike is the overall rule of cover for vehicles and the generation of CP's in a pool accessible to other detachments.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/07 13:50:48
Former moderator 40kOnline
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8th edition is the best edition of the game yet. Are there weak points to it? Sure. There always will be in a game. However, I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
Here's what I would say are amazing points that 8th edition has over any previous edition:
#1 - Troops aren't a tax. They're an investment
More than in any previous edition of the game, Troops are the backbone of your list. The reason is clear; Command Points. This gives another angle for players to "game" the system from. Stratagems are a big part of the game, and are able to turn lackluster units into golden units, and golden units in bonkers broken units. Regardless of what you're using them for, Stratagems are a big deal, but you'll only have access to a good number of them if you bring Battalions or Brigades, and for that you need the humble Troop. Troops aren't a tax any longer, they're points you're spending for a return on investment.
#2 - Anything can hurt anything. No action is completely wasted.
It really sucks when you just can't hurt something no matter what. Having a sliver of a chance is better than none. The current to-wound system is better than any other edition yet. It has its losers (sorry Multilasers & Heavy Bolters), but most guns feel like winners.
#3 - All hail modifiers.
A 6+ to hit is nearly impossible to make, but how about a 5+? Thanks to the wonderfulness of the to-wound and to-hit system they're using, modifiers have a big place in the game. +1 to wound doesn't sound much when you first hear it, but when you consider that in some cases it's increasing your damage output by 33% of something that already might deal a lot... and the effects add up fast. Previous systems just went all or nothing with instant buff to 2+, or instant drop to 6+.
#4 - Movement matters.
Getting across the table quickly has never been so important, and by opening up the movement options for all factions, the game really does feel like you're in the thick of it instantly. Anything that isn't crazy fast can feel slow as molasses by comparison, which can be really interesting in its own right!
#5 - Character rules work.
They may not always make sense ("But I can't even see any other target!! why can't I shoot the Farseer?"), but they are highly functional, with pros and cons for all sorts of positions and locations. Heroic intervention doesn't come up often, but is clutch when it does, and you can use that small movement to really bully some models out of an area. Auras may be a little over-plentiful at times, but they super helpful and really help make the character a central point to an army.
#6 - Mortal wounds are AWESOME.
Love these. I was really worried stepping into this edition and thinking of how it'd be like stomp, but it really hasn't been. Again, there's investment that needs to happen to make mortal wound spamming a thing. It's generally so hard that most armies don't do it. As such, the few instances where you can are amazing, and help knock over and keep in check units that are just really amazingly resilient.
#7 - Psychic Powers are a challenge, and the system to counteract them works.
You can make a psychic army (see; Smite), but a lot of previous psychic systems only ever seemed to make psychic powers odder and odder. Now it's a straight 2d6 roll against a target number. Beat it, it goes off. Don't get double 1's or 6's, or bad stuff happens. If your opponent has psykers nearby, they may snuff the power. Simple, clean, fast, effective, and fun.
#8 - Tournament systems are helping games be better.
Regardless of whether or not you play in tournaments, the fact that there are so many now, and these tournaments are getting support or even just recognition from a bigger community and GW helps everyone. It's because of tournies that GW can get the help to find really broken combinations that might be swept under the rug in previous editions. Being committed to making tournaments better helps keep GW involved, which helps all participants in the hobby. Yes, even you Mr. "I only collect 40k to paint the miniatures" guy! Look at the new Contrast Paints coming out. What's the big theme? Making the models Battle Ready. Ready for what? For tournaments! That's what!
#9 - GW is a more involved.
The biggest thing over other editions is just how involved GW is in their game. Because they've been involved, GW has been able to correct course on a bunch of things that were not fun. They fixed the character targeting rules. They fixed Smite Spam. They fixed Flyer Spam (twice!). They fixed infinitely regenerating CP. They're done a lot, and they will continue to help make the game better.
1. Troops weren't just a tax in 7th. It ultimately came down to which units where good in an individual codex. Fire Warriors, Necron Warriors, Eldar Jetbikes, Ork Boyz (hamstrung by Mob Rule being hot garbage but thats less an issue with the Boyz and more of an all Orks thing), etc where quite useful. I would argue that Tac Marines saw far more use in 6th and 7th than they do in 8th, scouts where quite useful in 7th as well. 8th still has this issue.
2. If you have a bolt action rifle and you see a tank, sorry but unless you also have a panzerfaust then your better of not trying to engage the bloody tank. There was tactics and gameplay to having units like AV14 tanks rolling around immune to all but the hard hitting AT weapons in the game. Your guys with rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, flame throwers, frag grenades, etc are there to deal with infantry and light skin vehicles while you leave the tank killing to units with AT weapons. Its still sorta the same (need a thousand shots to kill a land raider with guardsmen) but you also get wonky garbage like Tau's best answer to Knights to be combo stacking buff auras and stratagems with a ton of Fire Warriors to kill it with small arms fire.
3. Modifers on a d6 system and the way GW uses them leads to wonky math (see pulse rifle spamming down IKs). It turns into mathhammer the game more than anything about tactics.
4. Movement matters WAY MORE in past editions. Spacing for blast templates, vehicle facings, directional casualties, proper intervening terrain rules, etc all made your movement matter a lot. Now its mostly just using chaff screens to eat up deep strike possible locations and block charges. Also herding units around your buff auras.
5. Auras are too abundant now which leads to deathballs. It was fine on a select few units like an Ethereal or sometimes with certain Psyker powers but now (with the removal of templates) means you just cram those models in around your aura guy. Unrelated to auras is how the math works these days, melee characters generally aren't quite as impactful as they use to be. A PK Warboss in 7th was a zogging killing machine who could rip apart the enemy ranks but now that character who is suppose to be a bloody beast just struggles to kill a Rhino in 2-3 turns of combat.
6. Works in certain situations (ex: Tau Rail Rifles. That rail slug just blew a hole in not only the guy it hit but his buddy behind him) while being really zogging dumb in others (my trukk exploded, mortal wounds to that Mega Armored Warboss, Stompa, and Dakkajet).
7. Challenge? You literally roll a 2d6 and see your result. There is very little decision making or counter play going on. For all of 7th's horribly flawed problems with psykers, the whole mechanic of using more dice to increase the chance to get the power off at the risk of higher chance to perils was a good risk reward system (risk mitigation abilities like the one Farseers had ruined it). Nothing about 8th's system is risk reward other than the choice of "do you cast at all or not".
8. Tournaments are in some ways about finding the most broken mechanics and exploit them. Nothing inherently wrong with that but its more of a mentality of maximizing power to win rather than making well rounded or fun games. GW is just using those results to act as a source of play test data but GW has to be careful with how they use that data because its skewed to a very narrow slice of gameplay enviornment. I think earlier edition changes showed the dangers of their knee jerk reactions and using tournament data to fix game wide concerns.
9. This is the big one. This is why everyone IMO loves 8th and hates 7th because GW realized they can't sit in their ivory tower and dump their slop on the unwashed peasants living outside their window. They are actively engagng in marketing and are making an attempt to make adjustments to the game. Problem is they are using maybe the 2nd most stripped down version of the game outside of 3rd edition and they still have the same caliber of rule writers working for them. Frankly if GW actually gave a feth back in 6th, produced 7th with the intent of focusing on balance, and most importantly actually fixed their mistakes (like how bloody broken invisibility was) then 7th would of been one hell of an edition. The core rules where deep and interesting and if they did the whole formations thing with a focus on theme and moderation instead of Decurion power ramp stupidity then things would of been 10 times better. Tragically we have what i would call a subjectively bad rule set getting objectively better marketing and FAQ/Update support (community outreach).
"Hold my shoota, I'm goin in"
Armies (7th edition points)
7000+ Points Death Skullz
4000 Points
+ + 3000 Points "The Fiery Heart of the Emperor"
3500 Points "Void Kraken" Space Marines
3000 Points "Bard's Booze Cruise"
I'm glad my post generated some good discussion. However, I think I can mostly answer all of you together here; the problems mentioned here absolutely can be problems. However, those are problems with specific armies or units, and I would say isn't a problem of the system as a whole. Troops have a use outside being required to play the game. You can field armies without troops, or with minimal troops, or with tons of troops. Doing so changes your plan. To say that they're a tax because they help you get something so good that you can't really do without (CPs) is like saying that a Space Marine Captain is a tax for your army because he helps give you something so good that you can't really do without (reroll 1's to hit).
The thing is that LEARNING that these things are so good is a great first step in learning how 40k works as a game and getting better. I've had lots of newer opponents that didn't properly value their troops, just as I've had opponents that didn't take Space Marine Captains for their Space Marine lists. Once they tried with these things, their eyes opened to new aspects of the game they hadn't considered before. Yeah, this is pretty ankle-deep stuff - such that most players will be taught it before they make their first purchase, but not all players, and many players won't really learn it until they try to go without.
So, yes, Troops aren't tax. They're investments. Some are a better investment than others.
As for Slipspace's comments on Movement and the Psychic Phase, all I can say is that a friend of mine has really gotten deep into 40k and tourney games lately. He's realizing how important movement is, not just turn 1 or 2, but every turn of the game. Literally to the point of "Why haven't I been playing like this before? I'm use the same stuff, but my army feels like it's so much stronger!". And yes, while the Psychic Phase is simple, it gets a whole lot more complicated when two armies whom both need their psychics to work play against each other. You can stop an opponent from being able to even have a chance to deny by just being further away, but then you get this game of "bullying" units and psychic forces around so that you are trying to control where their psychics are and aren't, and what units they're buffing or not. Very tricky to properly execute.
Galef wrote: If you refuse to use rock, you will never beat scissors.
I started with 8e, so I can't really comment on the earlier editions, but one thing I like about it is that it's pretty easy to learn. There's not a lot of complicated rules, and each unit has a datasheet that will tell you 99% of what you need to know yo play it. But I can understand how some folks feel like it was "dumbed down". I feel like GW missed an opportunity by not including "advanced rules" in a sidebar. Keep the current rules as the "basic rules" then have all the neat stuff that people miss in these sidebars. Maybe the data sheets could have a little section on the side with the "missing" characteristics. I dunno. I ain't a game dev. I just feel like it wouldn't have taken too much more time or money, and it would have made their fanbase much happier about buying their product.
How is it not a problem of the system, when the problems come from the fact that GW designs a system to work in a specific way, with first turn deep strike, no rule of 3, and supposed assumption that smite spam is not going to be a thing. Designs armies to fit such a system and then after 3 codex decides to revert everything. It is not the armies that get changes it is how the system works or suppose to work.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Not going to post all my thoughts on 8th, but I'd like to weigh in on a couple of points:
Weapon Immunity
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
- There was also the issue of units being made immune to weapons that should be their weakness. In 7th, we had the Wraithknight being made virtually immune to Poison, which completely invalidated the main strength of DE and what is supposed to be a weakness of monstrous creatures. In 8th we have a similar issue with many large vehicles and monsters being given invulnerable saves, which invalidates the high AP value on weapons that are supposed to be effective against such.
- Also, there were many weapons that were supposed to be effective against vehicles but which just weren't. Dark Lances and Blasters were utterly abysmal in 7th, made worse by the fact that DE had almost no access to alternate anti-vehicle weapons.
- There was also an addition issue of units being virtually immune to many weapons. e.g. in 7th Necron Wraiths could technically be wounded by lasguns, but the odds of doing so were so awful that killing a Wraith without needing a completely ridiculous volume of guardsmen was a laughable affair.
Put simply, I can theoretically get behind some units being immune to certain weapons, but after past debacles I simply don't trust GW to actually execute it well. I also don't think it's viable in an edition where you can make an army out of basically anything.
Regarding the psychic phase, please, for the love of God, don't bring back the 7th edition version. It was one of the least fun mechanics I've ever seen in a game. People talk about risk vs. reward but that's a complete lie. The rewards were so game-changing and the risks so pitiful that it barely even constituted a decision. Not to mention the fact that armies able to spam psykers could simply steamroll armies unable to do so by sheer volume of psychic dice. It was a terrible system from every angle and one we should be grateful is dead and buried.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
Agreed but can we agree an army built entirely of knights sorta flies in the face of "normal" army construction ie combined arms, a mixture of infantry, jump infantry, vehicles, monsters, artillery, bikes, jetbikes and so on. Like mono build armies comprised of armour are the problem, not having an unforgiving hierarchy of firepower. I have no problem with a knight in an army as long as the point levels seem reasonable but entire knight armies has always seemed designed to empty wallets, not improve the quality of the rules.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
Agreed but can we agree an army built entirely of knights sorta flies in the face of "normal" army construction ie combined arms, a mixture of infantry, jump infantry, vehicles, monsters, artillery, bikes, jetbikes and so on. Like mono build armies comprised of armour are the problem, not having an unforgiving hierarchy of firepower. I have no problem with a knight in an army as long as the point levels seem reasonable but entire knight armies has always seemed designed to empty wallets, not improve the quality of the rules.
Oh I completely agree there.
What I was saying was that if certain units are going to be immune to small-arms-fire, then you really shouldn't be able to create armies that consist of nothing but those units.
It doesn't help that infantry in 40k has no real role beyond killing things. I kinda miss 5th's system where only troops could capture Objectives. Far from a perfect solution but at least it gave them something to do beyond mere firepower.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
Agreed but can we agree an army built entirely of knights sorta flies in the face of "normal" army construction ie combined arms, a mixture of infantry, jump infantry, vehicles, monsters, artillery, bikes, jetbikes and so on. Like mono build armies comprised of armour are the problem, not having an unforgiving hierarchy of firepower. I have no problem with a knight in an army as long as the point levels seem reasonable but entire knight armies has always seemed designed to empty wallets, not improve the quality of the rules.
Oh I completely agree there.
What I was saying was that if certain units are going to be immune to small-arms-fire, then you really shouldn't be able to create armies that consist of nothing but those units.
It doesn't help that infantry in 40k has no real role beyond killing things. I kinda miss 5th's system where only troops could capture Objectives. Far from a perfect solution but at least it gave them something to do beyond mere firepower.
Completely agree, the all knight faction shouldn't be a thing.
As for Slipspace's comments on Movement and the Psychic Phase, all I can say is that a friend of mine has really gotten deep into 40k and tourney games lately. He's realizing how important movement is, not just turn 1 or 2, but every turn of the game. Literally to the point of "Why haven't I been playing like this before? I'm use the same stuff, but my army feels like it's so much stronger!". And yes, while the Psychic Phase is simple, it gets a whole lot more complicated when two armies whom both need their psychics to work play against each other. You can stop an opponent from being able to even have a chance to deny by just being further away, but then you get this game of "bullying" units and psychic forces around so that you are trying to control where their psychics are and aren't, and what units they're buffing or not. Very tricky to properly execute.
I've seen a lot of people say this, or something similar, and I'm just not buying it. At the very least the concepts you're talking about here are so simplistic they barely qualify as tactics. Again, the game doesn't help when it has no tactical depth. There's no strategy in the Psychic phase because there's no player agency at all. You pick a power and roll 2D6, hoping for a decent roll. That's not tactics and it's not strategy. It's entirely possible it's just that all of us plebs who don't play enough tournaments are simply too inexperienced and naïve to understand the true complexity of the game, but I think it's much more likely that some people like to make this game out to be much more complex and nuanced than it actually is.
Movement has pretty much never been more basic. Before you had things like difficult and dangerous terrain and vehicles had firing arcs and av facings. Additionally were casualties came from and what a unit could fire at in a given turn was far more restricted. Even deep striking used to have a good amount of risks unless you had certain items on the board before you did it.
Now units just appear, a tank with ten guns can fire through a cracked window slit and vehicles don't have to worry about position. Add that to the worst terrain rules in general from any addition and movement is pretty much boiled down to did I bubble wrap my heavy hitting unit with enough weak chaff units.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
Agreed but can we agree an army built entirely of knights sorta flies in the face of "normal" army construction ie combined arms, a mixture of infantry, jump infantry, vehicles, monsters, artillery, bikes, jetbikes and so on. Like mono build armies comprised of armour are the problem, not having an unforgiving hierarchy of firepower. I have no problem with a knight in an army as long as the point levels seem reasonable but entire knight armies has always seemed designed to empty wallets, not improve the quality of the rules.
Oh I completely agree there.
What I was saying was that if certain units are going to be immune to small-arms-fire, then you really shouldn't be able to create armies that consist of nothing but those units.
It doesn't help that infantry in 40k has no real role beyond killing things. I kinda miss 5th's system where only troops could capture Objectives. Far from a perfect solution but at least it gave them something to do beyond mere firepower.
Completely agree, the all knight faction shouldn't be a thing.
Also agree on troops scoring.
I've mentioned in previous posts in this thread that the "everything can wound everything" rule is not necessarily a bad thing in general, just in its current form. Regarding your point: do you think it would make for a good or at least better system, when a unit that would be normally immune to small arms fire can still be wounded by a normal guardsman with a flashlight, but only ever on 6s (and make those 6s not modifiable). So that a small guy can still wound a big unit if he's really lucky.
TheFleshIsWeak wrote: Regarding the psychic phase, please, for the love of God, don't bring back the 7th edition version. It was one of the least fun mechanics I've ever seen in a game. People talk about risk vs. reward but that's a complete lie. The rewards were so game-changing and the risks so pitiful that it barely even constituted a decision. Not to mention the fact that armies able to spam psykers could simply steamroll armies unable to do so by sheer volume of psychic dice. It was a terrible system from every angle and one we should be grateful is dead and buried.
This is one of those things where the direction you look at with the issue gives a very different result. For me the core mechanic of "more dice gives better chance but higher risk" is interesting and compelling. I'm not talking about how BS invisibility or fortune was because in my mind they are two separate issues. There is so many things wrong with the 7th psychic phase and I don't think anybody can actually say it was a perfect or even good system but it required some calculated risk reward management which can be fun gameplay. The thing is that lessons could be learned from 7th's psychic phase abuse and be used to correct it (clearly GW didn't because CP batteries are the new warp dice batteries). Make it about meaningful gameplay (decision making, risk reward, counter play potential), find ways to curtail extreme edge cases from breaking the system, and don't write broken powers that ruin the game. Instead 8th made it a flat 2d6 roll with a static chance to perils, each power having basically a static chance to go off, and if an enemy psyker is nearby its a roll off with very little downside to attempting to deny.
A lot of the arguments about 7th vs 8th seem to always come down to how you look at it. For me with 7th I try to see the ingredients that went into making the thing, figure out what works, what didn't, and what could of been if things where done differently. With digging down into 7th a lot, I saw a lot of things that where really good with the core rules of the game that created a lot of fun gameplay experiences. I am also quite aware of a lot of the edition's short comings, especially the abysmal attempts at balance and lack of consistency between codex strengths (see Dark Eldar vs Craftworld). The thing is that its the core elements of 7th that made the game fun but it was GW's incompetence and apathy that resulted in a wildly unstable balance that required the players to police themselves to keep the game being fun (Don't bring an optimized Tau list vs anything Dark Eldar for example). So many things could get in the way of a fun time but the potential for fun was there and with the right pairing of lists and player mentalities. A lot of fun games could be had (I know I sure as hell did have fun with 7th). Now on the other hand 8th is the opposite where for me the end result every time is a boring game. A lot of the elements that people talk about as being good might very well be good but when everything is put together the end result is boring (win or lose). The game lacks a fundamental depth to it and I don't think any amount of piled on rules from codexes, supplements, FAQs, CAs, White Dwarf whatevers, etc can deepen this wading pool of an edition.
"Hold my shoota, I'm goin in"
Armies (7th edition points)
7000+ Points Death Skullz
4000 Points
+ + 3000 Points "The Fiery Heart of the Emperor"
3500 Points "Void Kraken" Space Marines
3000 Points "Bard's Booze Cruise"
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
Agreed but can we agree an army built entirely of knights sorta flies in the face of "normal" army construction ie combined arms, a mixture of infantry, jump infantry, vehicles, monsters, artillery, bikes, jetbikes and so on. Like mono build armies comprised of armour are the problem, not having an unforgiving hierarchy of firepower. I have no problem with a knight in an army as long as the point levels seem reasonable but entire knight armies has always seemed designed to empty wallets, not improve the quality of the rules.
The issue is that GW has made list building less and less restrictive so you don’t end up with combined arms forces, you end up with all tanks, all knights, all light infantry (horde) as lists that negate large portions of your opponents effectiveness. Such free form armies should have always been left to narrative or fun games and not to standard (matched play) lists. I remember when playing your 1500 point army against 3 Baneblades was a for fun mission in the Battle Missions book, now that is a standard legal matches play game. Without a move back to more restrictive lists forcing a more combined arms approach everything hurts everything is a necessary evil
Slipspace wrote: There's no strategy in the Psychic phase because there's no player agency at all. You pick a power and roll 2D6, hoping for a decent roll. That's not tactics and it's not strategy.
The psychic phase is an interesting one. I certainly agree that the current version lacks tactical depth but then so has every previous version.
Maybe we could salvage the least-worst parts of 7th's psychic phase? For example, rather than all psykers pooling their resources (plus the result of a random dice), what if every psyker generated a set number of psychic dice each turn (based roughly on their mastery level)? e.g. a Primaris Psyker could generate 3 psychic dice, a Shadowseer 6, a Farseer 7.
They can spend those dice to try and cast spells, but with increased risk of perils. Also, there should either be an upper limit to how many dice they can spend on a given spell or else the risk substantially increases after a certain number (e.g. if a Psyker spends more than 5 psychic dice to cast a spell, any Perils result they incur will inflict twice the normal damage).
Not sure whether the check needed to cast a spell should be based on the overall total or on getting a number of 4+ rolls.
Lastly, unspent psychic dice are used to attempt to Deny the Witch in the opponent's turn (giving it more of a resource-management component). Armies without psykers would generate psychic dice to Deny the Witch by other means.
Just spitballing here but I'm trying to think of a system that's more involved and tactical than the current one, whilst still containing the randomness and risk associated with harnessing warp energies, and also not devolving into the absolute nonsense that was 7th's psychic phase.
This is one of those things where the direction you look at with the issue gives a very different result. For me the core mechanic of "more dice gives better chance but higher risk" is interesting and compelling. I'm not talking about how BS invisibility or fortune was because in my mind they are two separate issues.
Except that they're not because that was one of the major issues with 7th's system - the "risk" was completely negligible compared to the reward so there was no tactic beyond just spamming psychic dice to guarantee casting the strongest powers.
A lot of the arguments about 7th vs 8th seem to always come down to how you look at it. For me with 7th I try to see the ingredients that went into making the thing, figure out what works, what didn't, and what could of been if things where done differently. With digging down into 7th a lot, I saw a lot of things that where really good with the core rules of the game that created a lot of fun gameplay experiences. I am also quite aware of a lot of the edition's short comings, especially the abysmal attempts at balance and lack of consistency between codex strengths (see Dark Eldar vs Craftworld). The thing is that its the core elements of 7th that made the game fun but it was GW's incompetence and apathy that resulted in a wildly unstable balance that required the players to police themselves to keep the game being fun (Don't bring an optimized Tau list vs anything Dark Eldar for example). So many things could get in the way of a fun time but the potential for fun was there and with the right pairing of lists and player mentalities. A lot of fun games could be had (I know I sure as hell did have fun with 7th). Now on the other hand 8th is the opposite where for me the end result every time is a boring game. A lot of the elements that people talk about as being good might very well be good but when everything is put together the end result is boring (win or lose). The game lacks a fundamental depth to it and I don't think any amount of piled on rules from codexes, supplements, FAQs, CAs, White Dwarf whatevers, etc can deepen this wading pool of an edition.
I don't disagree. I think perhaps too much of 7th (and 40k in general) was thrown out for 8th.
e.g. I much preferred the Initiative system to 8th's combat system.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/07 15:42:21
Slipspace wrote: I've seen a lot of people say this, or something similar, and I'm just not buying it. At the very least the concepts you're talking about here are so simplistic they barely qualify as tactics. Again, the game doesn't help when it has no tactical depth. There's no strategy in the Psychic phase because there's no player agency at all. You pick a power and roll 2D6, hoping for a decent roll. That's not tactics and it's not strategy. It's entirely possible it's just that all of us plebs who don't play enough tournaments are simply too inexperienced and naïve to understand the true complexity of the game, but I think it's much more likely that some people like to make this game out to be much more complex and nuanced than it actually is.
So you feel the same way about the shooting phase and the movement phase? Or the charge phase, for that matter?
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
Agreed but can we agree an army built entirely of knights sorta flies in the face of "normal" army construction ie combined arms, a mixture of infantry, jump infantry, vehicles, monsters, artillery, bikes, jetbikes and so on. Like mono build armies comprised of armour are the problem, not having an unforgiving hierarchy of firepower. I have no problem with a knight in an army as long as the point levels seem reasonable but entire knight armies has always seemed designed to empty wallets, not improve the quality of the rules.
The issue is that GW has made list building less and less restrictive so you don’t end up with combined arms forces, you end up with all tanks, all knights, all light infantry (horde) as lists that negate large portions of your opponents effectiveness. Such free form armies should have always been left to narrative or fun games and not to standard (matched play) lists. I remember when playing your 1500 point army against 3 Baneblades was a for fun mission in the Battle Missions book, now that is a standard legal matches play game. Without a move back to more restrictive lists forcing a more combined arms approach everything hurts everything is a necessary evil
Agreed, they have to clamp down and force combined arms. It's funny seeing gw tease apocalypse, like everyone hasn't been playing it all along with all the big models in normal play.
Slipspace wrote: There's no strategy in the Psychic phase because there's no player agency at all. You pick a power and roll 2D6, hoping for a decent roll. That's not tactics and it's not strategy.
The psychic phase is an interesting one. I certainly agree that the current version lacks tactical depth but then so has every previous version.
Maybe we could salvage the least-worst parts of 7th's psychic phase? For example, rather than all psykers pooling their resources (plus the result of a random dice), what if every psyker generated a set number of psychic dice each turn (based roughly on their mastery level)? e.g. a Primaris Psyker could generate 3 psychic dice, a Shadowseer 6, a Farseer 7.
Or you just co-opt 8th edition WH's magic phase, which included all of the elements you need. That's what makes this so frustrating - GW have already developed an interesting system for this and rejected it. Yes, the 8th edition magic phase had problems, just like 7th edition 40k's psychic phase, but a lot of those issues were with specific spells/powers, not the mechanics of the phase itself.
solkan wrote:
Slipspace wrote: I've seen a lot of people say this, or something similar, and I'm just not buying it. At the very least the concepts you're talking about here are so simplistic they barely qualify as tactics. Again, the game doesn't help when it has no tactical depth. There's no strategy in the Psychic phase because there's no player agency at all. You pick a power and roll 2D6, hoping for a decent roll. That's not tactics and it's not strategy. It's entirely possible it's just that all of us plebs who don't play enough tournaments are simply too inexperienced and naïve to understand the true complexity of the game, but I think it's much more likely that some people like to make this game out to be much more complex and nuanced than it actually is.
So you feel the same way about the shooting phase and the movement phase? Or the charge phase, for that matter?
It's roughly the same depth throughout the game.
The problem with the psychic phase is the reliance on Mortal Wounds means Toughness and armour save don't matter and some of the powers can be pretty game-breaking with no counter-play at all. The way Denying works is indicative of a lot of the rules GW writes - pointless a lot of time but apparently if it provides a possibility for something to happen, regardless of how unlikely or out of a player's control it is, it's a good rule. But broadly, yes, I think one of 40k's biggest problems right now is a general lack of depth. The Psychic phase is worse than the other phases in many ways, but I don't think there's much depth in the shooting or movement phases either, due to the high lethality and extreme mobility in the game and the relative uselessness of terrain.
I like 8th a lot. I wish I could play it more, but sadly I'm swamped atm. It's up there with 4th and 2nd, for me. It's a pretty smooth system overall.
My biggest beef with 8th are the terrain rules, which are inadequate.
2nd Beef is the Aura mechanic. Esp. for Marines. I would prefer less re-rolling, as it gets very tedious. I'd also don't like feeling like I have to clump my elite solders up as much as I do. It feels wrong.
My 3rd beef is the whole Stratagem paradigm. It's a little distracting, I think. It's not bad, just not something I like.
Or you just co-opt 8th edition WH's magic phase, which included all of the elements you need.
Or we could cast psychic powers by dipping our hands into tubs of sulphuric acid, which would be significantly less painful than 8th edition WHFB's godawful magic system.
Or you just co-opt 8th edition WH's magic phase, which included all of the elements you need.
Or we could cast psychic powers by dipping our hands into tubs of sulphuric acid, which would be significantly less painful than 8th edition WHFB's godawful magic system.
The basic mechanics were fine. The execution was not because GW is terrible at balancing things in general and the spells in 8th were all over the place.
The big improvement in 8th is in how much easier it is to actually play a game. I remember as a kid playing 4th how a 2,000 point game could easily take 5 or 6 hours with less-experienced players who hadn't memorized everything. It was agonizing, and bad for the game because as people grow up into adults they don't have uninterrupted stretches of time that long to sink into it anymore. I stopped playing for years because a game of 40K was too big a time investment.
The bones of 8th edition are pretty good and I expect 9th to be a reasonable refinement, the way 4th edition was for the wildly unbalanced 3rd.
I'm most dissatisfied with the uselessly minimal terrain and line-of-sight rules that means everything can shoot everything else. Strategems are also a poor replacement for richness and depth in the core rules, and re-orient the game around pulling off and countering sick combos (and mostly the same ones, too; this is no MTG where the good options are practically limitless). Balance was already a problem, and strategems added another dimension that needs to be balanced properly, and currently is not. If those problems get fixed, a lot will be improved IMO.
Other minor irritations include riskless ubiquitous deep strike, transport vehicles being useless, blast and flamer weapons having no real niche and not being worthwhile to take, and the to-wound table making high shot mid-strength weapons best against everything. I don't really mind all the re-rolls because games are still plenty fast.
But otherwise, the game is fun. And if we're honest with ourselves, every edition of 40K has had stupid and broken rules that encouraged stupid strategies, like the infamous Rhino Rush and HQ deathballs. Remember going 30" a turn and killing multiple units with Sweeping Advance? Remember how incredibly fragile and slow vehicles used to be? Remember the proliferation of D-weapons? Remember frag grenades being literally worthless unless you're assaulting into cover? LOL!
Pointed Stick mentioned the most important element here. 40K, in any edition has never been a particularly good game. Despite people saying otherwise, it's never been heavily strategic or deeply tactical. If you think that, you may have never played an actual military wargame (which I don't really equate to 40K).
While I completely appreciate people not enjoying 8th, or not liking the rules designs...I think you're full of gak if you say any other edition of 40K was strategic and tactical or was particularly deep. The only one that approached any of that was perhaps 2nd, a game so complex (and enjoyable) that most people used about 70% of the rules because you couldn't remember all of them.
There isn't a single edition of 40K that accurately reflects the general nature of how combat or strategy/tactics work - let's not kid ourselves.
Elbows wrote: Pointed Stick mentioned the most important element here. 40K, in any edition has never been a particularly good game. Despite people saying otherwise, it's never been heavily strategic or deeply tactical.
Good enough to sell bundles for decades, and "strategic" enough for high skill players to win consistently.
Its not a very good game at all, that i think lives mostly on it being 40k rather than any good design.
Its not really that simple at all, with mostly just a super simple basic rules and then piles and piles of other stuff to learn.
It certainly would not have gotten a second look if not for nostalgia around here, The new story i do not think is much a draw ether at this point.
With most players still hanging on mostly enjoying the older stuff, rather than the new.
Its not something i would recommend at this point. It is a shame that GW has never really been able to clean up the issues over what has been far to many editions at this point. Just shift them around.
I would also say that previous editions over the years have been better and more tactical based purely on the reach and damage output of a lot of the units in the factions being lower, and that the factions themselves where designed to be playing the same style of game. With the outliers being less extreame in power, and more to give fun alternative game types and missions.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/07 19:17:33
" I'm sorry, but after 7200 's that has to be the most annoying sign-off ever." 
7000+ Points Death Skullz
4000 Points
+ 
+ 3000 Points "The Fiery Heart of the Emperor"
3000 Points "Bard's Booze Cruise" 
